


who has past thy grand climacteric

by marit



Series: a series of cats [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: And sometimes Steve, Cats, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, It's basically an ode to cats, M/M, Who love Bucky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-10
Updated: 2015-05-10
Packaged: 2018-03-29 23:34:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3914818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marit/pseuds/marit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He doesn’t always like himself or his weak, often traitorous body, but he does like this, this little section of Brooklyn he’s carved out with Bucky and a cat with a thousand different names.</p>
            </blockquote>





	who has past thy grand climacteric

**Author's Note:**

> Title shamelessly stolen from [that Keats cat poem](http://poems.com/Poets%27%20Picks%202012/April_02_Don_Share.html) that holds a couple relevant lines.

The cat follows Bucky home only a couple of weeks after they move into the small one-room apartment three streets away from where Steve grew up.

Steve’s sitting at their tiny kitchen table, if it can be called that when they don’t have a dining room so much as a space by a window between the kitchen area and the bed. It’s the only real flat surface that isn’t the floor or the kitchen countertop, and as a result serves as table-slash-desk-slash-storage area. 

He’s squinting at a newspaper he snagged from Mr. Fitzgerald downstairs. It’s dark outside and Bucky’s late coming back from work, his long day obvious in the way he bangs through the front door, kicks off his boots and collapses cross-ways on the bed with a groan. 

Steve gets up to shut the door that Bucky has left wide open, and it’s then that he notices the cat. It’s large and orange, its long hair in disarray. It meows at Steve and twists around his feet. Steve stares at it, and then out the door. He makes a shooing motion with one hand and the cat ignores him in favor of investigating the kitchen cupboards. It meows again, loudly. Steve looks at Bucky helplessly, but his arm has fallen across his eyes and he’s holding himself in a way that suggests a headache he will never admit to. He doesn’t seem to notice or care about the cat meowing in their apartment.

“Um, Bucky?” Steve asks. 

“Yeah?” he answers, and that one word carries so much exhaustion that Steve wants to simply shut the door, crawl in beside him, and ignore the cat. They can live with a cat. Why not? It can fend for itself, get its own food. It wouldn’t be a problem at all.

He has to ask, though, but he at least gets to the point of shutting the door. The cat is now up on the table sniffing at Steve’s empty plate and clearly has no interest in leaving. “Who is this?”

Bucky moves his arm away from his eyes long enough to look over the cat. He shrugs, or as close to it as he can from his prone position. “Mittens? Buttons? I don’t know.”

“It has a name?”

“He, Steve. And of course he has a name.”

His arm is back in place so he continues to miss Steve’s confused expression.

“Why is he here?”

“Dunno. He just followed me,” Bucky answers, like that’s perfectly reasonable. Steve supposes it is, in a way, although it doesn’t explain why Bucky allowed it to happen. 

“Is he living here now?” Steve asks, unable to keep an amount of amusement out of his voice. Only Bucky would be so nonchalant about a cat following him home.

The answer is another shrug and a twisted mouth. Bucky doesn’t elaborate further, instead opting to sprawl in silence. 

Steve lets him be, and instead just gets a glass of water for Bucky and water in a bowl for the cat. He might be just as ridiculous, since he’s apparently also accepting the cat in their apartment. He’s oddly reluctant to touch it, though, so he just pulls shut the ugly curtains as well, cutting off the light filtering through from outside and putting them in near-darkness. 

He shuffles over to the bed, pausing only to toe his own shoes off, kick his pants away and carefully set the water down on the floor before he slides in next to Bucky. 

“Bad day?” he asks quietly.

Bucky hums, pulling him in closer and shoving his face in Steve’s shoulder. 

“Fine now,” he says into Steve’s shirt.

“Liar,” Steve scolds, combing a hand through Bucky’s hair and leaving it there to rub a thumb behind his ear. 

There’s a noise of protest from the area of Steve’s armpit. “It’s always better when I get home,” comes the muffled elaboration. 

Steve wants to argue that that doesn’t negate the otherwise bad day, but he also feels a pang in his chest that has more to do with fondness than the chin digging into him, so he lets the conversation fall silent. There’s a quiet and inquiring mew from the corner, a small thump as something soft falls off the table followed by the equally quiet sound of the cat jumping off to follow whatever it was that he pushed off the table. Steve resists the urge to investigate. 

“We should get these off. It’ll be more comfortable,” Steve says quietly after a bit, before Bucky can fall asleep. He tugs at the waist of Bucky’s pants. 

“Not sure I’m up for that right now, Steve.” It’s said teasingly, but the fact that Bucky even remotely admitted to it is testament to how badly he feels.

Steve huffs a laugh, pressing down firmly on Bucky’s head with his thumb in reprimand. “Not what I meant.” 

He reluctantly sits up and Bucky makes a noise of protest, turning to burrow his eyes back in his arm instead. His upper body is now in an awkward twist that makes getting his clothes off difficult. It doesn’t help that he barely does any of the work himself, simply responding to Steve as he pushes him around. 

“Come on, sit up,” Steve directs, pushing on one shoulder. “Get in bed properly.” 

There’s another protesting groan but Bucky does sit up, and Steve takes the opportunity to also slide his shirt over his head. Bucky’s completely naked now, and it’s not that Steve actually does have ulterior motives but that he knows Bucky prefers the skin-to-skin contact and will never ask for it. He worries, often, about Steve getting too cold or someone somehow bursting in on them at some inopportune moment. Clothed, it’s easy enough to say you’re huddling for warmth; unclothed, well, there’s fewer conclusions to be drawn.

He sheds the rest of his own clothes before pulling the blankets up over them. Bucky immediately pulls him in again, his face landing in Steve’s neck this time. He pushes his mouth against it and it sends a shiver down Steve’s back that, he knows from the subsequent smirk pressed against his skin, Bucky notices. 

“Ignore that,” Steve immediately says. Instead, Bucky gently bites at him before landing a kiss under his jaw. 

“Thought you weren’t feeling well,” Steve forces out, when what he really wants to do is impossibly pull Bucky in closer, to slide their hips together. 

“Nah, I never said that. ‘m all right,” Bucky says into Steve’s collarbone, as if Steve wasn’t present minutes ago when he had more or less admitted to a giant headache. 

Steve’s cut off from protesting any further when there’s a sudden movement at the end of the bed and Bucky abruptly sits up, narrowly missing connecting the top of his head with Steve’s chin. 

“Christ! Forgot about the cat,” he says. Said cat chases the movement of Bucky’s feet under the covers up the bed.

Steve can’t help but laugh at the expression Bucky levels at the cat, as if the cat has mortally offended him with its playfulness. The cat paws ineffectually but determinedly at the blankets over Steve’s feet when they shift before abruptly turning to pounce on Bucky’s right knee instead. 

“Go away, Mittens, we were having a moment,” Bucky says, making an ineffectual shooing motion similar to Steve’s earlier one. They both continue to refuse to touch the cat. 

“Not much of a moment,” Steve remarks, “When one of you’s likely to fall asleep in the middle of it.”

Bucky turns his offended expression to Steve. “I’m completely awake,” he insists, even as he falls back down again. The cat takes it as an opportunity to jump further up the bed in the direction of his elbow.

“Go away,” Bucky says again from where he has pulled the blankets up over his face so that only the top of his head is visible. 

“You let him in here,” Steve points out.

“You go away as well.” 

“Aw, you don’t mean that. We’re having a moment.” Steve pulls at the blanket enough to get under it himself and a disgruntled Bucky rolls toward him again. The cat moves with him before jumping off the bed to chase something unknown across the floor. 

“Stupid Mittens,” Bucky grumbles into the pillow.

 

 

The cat becomes a feature in their apartment even though Bucky keeps complaining they should stop letting it in. Steve more or less tolerates it, but from a distance. The cat makes him sneeze and it’s constantly pushing his pencil off the table and it wakes him up in the middle of the night and it hogs the bed, but Bucky likes it despite his outward annoyance. (“He!” Bucky tells him, every time Steve calls him an it.)

The cat usually disappears when Bucky’s not around, leaving Steve more or less alone unless he has food or somehow looks entertaining. It returns every night to lounge around or cause trouble. It’s just like Bucky, Steve thinks, to somehow attract affection without meaning to. The cat has clearly taken to Bucky, claiming him as its own out of all the other people it must pass by daily. Steve’s a sidenote, an accidental beneficiary of the cat’s presence. 

Nothing illustrates the cat’s integration into their lives better than when Bucky bursts into the apartment one evening, cat held tightly in his arms, Bucky indignant and the cat purring loudly. 

“Someone tried to kick our cat!” he proclaims loudly. Steve wonders when the cat went from “the cat” to “our cat.” “Poor old Frank,” he says, both to Steve and the cat. 

“Frank?” Steve asks. 

Bucky kicks the door shut, and Steve winces at the bang. “Our cat! Frank!”

“Oh, right.” Today it’s Frank. Yesterday it was Stinger. The day before that it was Mitsy. Bucky’s been trying out names on the cat until, Steve assumes, something will stick. “Why did someone try to kick Frank?”

“I don’t know! He never did a thing, though,” he says, like it’s obvious that the cat can only be blameless in the situation. Not that anyone should kick an animal, but Steve suspects the cat was probably trying to steal something since he caught it two days ago trying to make away with his sock and two days before that, with his breakfast. 

“Of course not,” Steve reassures. 

The cat, still purring, shoves its nose in the crook of Bucky’s elbow and Bucky smiles at it fondly, stroking behind its ear, and Steve thinks he’d keep the cat even if it stole his whole wardrobe just to keep that look on Bucky’s face. 

 

 

It’s cold and wet and still dark but the cat wants out anyway, pawing and meowing at the door like it always does. Steve slides out from under the blankets and scrambles across the cold floor to open the door for it before shutting it again and practically running back into bed. 

“Steve out?” Bucky mumbles sleepily, and it takes Steve a moment to realize Bucky’s referring to the cat and not him. 

“Steve?” he asks, because he has to.

“Yeah. You’re both jerks who wake me up. Steve. Same name. Used for annoying animals who don’t let me sleep.” His words are tempered by his actions, a tired shuffle forward into Steve’s space. “Cold feet,” he remarks. “The other Steve’s got furry, warm feet. Bring him back instead.” 

And Steve wants to keep him here forever, soft and sleepy and compliant, as the war looms over their tiny apartment. There’s no winning against that, Steve thinks sometimes. He wants to hope and he wants to fight but he can’t help also know the possible outcomes, that no one really returns from that the same, and he doesn’t always like himself or his weak, often traitorous body but he does like this, this little section of Brooklyn he’s carved out with Bucky and a cat with a thousand different names. 

“Stop thinking that,” Bucky says, reading something in the tenseness of Steve’s muscles or the way he’s breathing or some other indeterminate way that means Steve can never hide anything from his best friend. “Whatever it is. No more.” 

“Sorry.” Steve apologizes instead of elaborating because that would be thinking about it further. He wraps an arm around Bucky’s back, pulling him in close. “Give me something else to think about.”

He means a topic and only realizes the other way that might be taken when Bucky huffs a laugh that ruffles Steve’s hair a bit. “We got time for that?”

He’s blushing now, but he answers, honestly, “Yeah, it’s still early.” Neither of them has to be anywhere for awhile yet, actually, one of those rare mornings where they’re not scrambling to get everything together before running out of the apartment. 

“Then that’s a great plan,” Bucky says, pushing himself up on one elbow so he’s hovering over Steve, his face close. “Prepare for a new topic.”

Before Steve can come up with a response about how ridiculous that is, Bucky’s dropped down into a kiss, a bit stale with morning breath but slow and promising and Steve finds he really can’t care, then, about what the future is likely to bring, because right now this is all that matters. It’s that quick, Bucky’s ability to overwhelm him.

Bucky’s hand settles on Steve’s side, travels down, taps and strokes idle patterns on his ribs, slowly moves down past his hip to hook his leg around Bucky’s. It’s slow, steady, but Steve wants more because his thoughts still lurk at his corners, so he takes the opportunity to nudge Bucky onto his back so Steve’s on top, hovering above him and more or less in control now. They barely break the kiss until Steve moves his mouth to the side, around the angle of Bucky’s chin and down the curve of his neck. 

He slides down further, aligns their hips and hovers just long enough for Bucky to make an annoyed noise and and grab onto Steve’s hips. He doesn’t pull down, though, lets Steve stay in control as his left hand rubs soothing patterns into his lower back. Steve laughs into his chest, briefly, biting down gently before he lets his hips drop, both of their breaths stuttering as he rocks forward. 

It’s dry and not enough, and Bucky squeezes his hip, asks, breathless, “Can I--?”

Steve nods against Bucky’s chest, even as he contradicts himself, an incomplete sentence meaning something else, “I want--”

“I know, just let me--” and cuts himself off again, this time with a very quiet moan as Steve pushes down hard. He prods Steve up enough so he can reach his left hand between their bodies to wrap around both of them and pull, and Steve muffles a noise against Bucky’s skin. 

Bucky lets it last almost too long but also not nearly long enough, Steve’s arms starting to feel weak with the effort of holding his own weight up high enough to give Bucky room to move. He moves his hand away even as Steve is breathing hard and close, his other hand still soft against Steve’s hip, and he scrambles beside their low bed for a moment before his fingers return slicker on Steve, a single, hard stroke that causes Steve’s hips to unintentionally jerk forward before Bucky’s fingers travel lower.

“You shouldn’t--beside the bed,” Steve says, breathless, trying to sound at least sort of reprimanding as Bucky strokes his perineum. 

“I know, I know,” is the equally breathless response. “Yell at me later,” even though they both know that won’t happen, that Steve can barely stay angry at Bucky over the important things let alone what Steve discovers in the middle of sex about the incriminating evidence Bucky sometimes leaves beside the bed. 

“Hurry up,” he says instead of anything else on the subject, because Bucky’s finger is still teasing and soft.

“Demanding,” Bucky murmurs, even as his right hand grips Steve’s hip harder and he slowly pushes one finger in. Steve’s forced to muffle another groan against Bucky’s chest because he has yet to master staying quiet as well as Bucky has.

He stretches Steve open slowly and carefully, like he always does even when Steve tries to egg him on faster and pushes back against his fingers. 

There’s a moment shortly after Bucky’s hips push up and Steve pushes down to meet him, when they’ve fit together, that it catches up to Steve again, his previous thoughts that he needed to be distracted from in the first place. It’s like a collision, and Bucky notices immediately, reaches up to Steve, says, “It’s fine, we’re fine, come here,” like Steve isn’t already near, pulls him down and pushes himself up to meet his mouth halfway, and it’s a bit awkward, there’s no way it can’t be because Steve’s shorter, but Bucky makes it seem right anyway, somehow. He shifts a bit, probably mostly unintentionally, and Steve gasps into his mouth in a combination of so many things all at once. 

Bucky continues to speak reassurances until they turn into mostly meaningless words and Steve can’t even attend to them any more, simply listening to the cadence of his voice until it breaks off and he arches up, hard, and then Steve’s mind momentarily blanks out too, wonderfully.

After, he slides down again beside Bucky on the bed, and after a few minutes of quiet, Bucky says, “Steve wants back in.”

And, again, it takes a moment for Steve to realize Bucky is referring to the cat, who apparently decided the rain was not something it wanted to be out in. 

“You really need to name it something different.”

“Him, Steve-the-person,” Bucky corrects. “What do you suggest? Otto. Yarn. Wooden. Perch. Owl?” and he pushes himself out of bed, haphazardly cleans himself off, and shoves pants on as he continues to list increasingly more ridiculous names all the way to the door. “Mr. Staircase!” he announces, as the cat darts in, looking wet and annoyed and completely unwilling to put up with Bucky's enthusiasm. It crouches under the table, glaring at the both of them like they somehow caused the water to fall from the sky. 

“Aw, Sir Ham doesn’t like the rain. Look at him, angry and adorable. You have that in common.”

He turns to smile at Steve, who glares at him from the warmth of the blankets so that Bucky is bracketed by a pair of glares. Bucky pads quietly back over to the bed and kneels on the edge. He places a hand on either side of Steve’s face, gently, and then kisses him. “You’re amazing,” he says firmly, like Steve has to be convinced of it. There’s something wistful and a bit sad in his face, though, that causes Steve to wrap his arms around him and pull him in. They simply breathe, and Steve forces down all the panicky words that want to crawl out of his throat. 

 

 

On Bucky’s last night, they are so quiet and slow moving it almost seems dreamlike. They wake up to the cat curled fast asleep between them, where it stays until they have to force themselves out of the safety of their bed. 

On Steve’s last night, the cat sleeps right on his stomach and Steve knows he shouldn’t let it, that it’s bad for his breathing and it will be uncomfortable and it’s spoiling the cat, but it’s warm and comforting and its occasional shift reminds him that he’s not alone in the apartment that used to feel like home but now just feels lonely. 

He tidies the next morning because he’s not sure what else to do. Their things don’t really matter. There isn’t much that either of them are really attached to. The cat, though, Steve doesn’t really know what to do about. He ends up leaving the window open enough that the cat can get in if it really wants to; otherwise, it feeds itself, can find water, has been surviving for probably years on its own without Bucky and, by association, Steve. The cat’s not even really theirs, for all that it’s been in their apartment more nights than not in the past year or so. He feels awful, though, like he’s abandoning it to helplessness as he shuts the door behind the both of them and locks it. 

The cat follows Steve all the way down to the street. He can’t help but kneel down, then, scratch the cat behind the ears. It rubs against the heel of Steve’s hand affectionately. 

“I’ll keep an eye out for that cat, don’t you worry,” comes a voice behind him. Mrs. O’Neill’s hair has gone mostly gray quickly in the last year, and it’s escaping its pins. She looks motherly, though, standing there in her worn dress and her old shoes, and it’s comfort for no real reason, just like how her words are reassuring even though she might be lying, even though Steve knows perfectly well the cat would be fine anyway. 

She seems to understand, because she gives him a soft smile as Steve straightens from his crouch. “It’ll be here waiting for you, right as rain,” she says. She gives him a nod before leaving without another word, with no platitudes or anything else given. 

The cat meows, threads around Steve’s legs and then darts away, a streak of orange after a spotted mouse. Steve watches it disappear down an alley, grips one strap of his bag, and walks away. 

 

 

They’re in some indeterminate part of Europe when there’s a squawk of outrage from the other side of where they’ve set up camp, followed by quiet laughter and the low murmur of someone complaining. 

“What’s going on?” Steve asks once he’s close enough to not have to yell. 

“Cat stole my food!” Jones responds, indignant. 

“A cat?” The repetition makes Steve sound a bit stupid, but, well, a cat? Here? 

“Aw, he must’ve been hungry. He’s probably been living out here for ages.” Bucky comes up behind Steve, gently squeezes his elbow on the way past behind him. It’s been a long day of travel following an even longer, exhausting mission that nearly got Dernier killed and ended with Steve and Morita taking a plunge into an unexpected pond. Morita’s crouched by the fire now, since they’ve still got travel ahead of them and there’s no way Steve was going to let everyone travel through the night damp from rain or, in Steve and Morita’s case, quite disgusting pond water. Bucky’s hand is gone in an instant, although he stays close to Steve’s side. Steve desperately wants to lean into him, to try to soak up his heat like he used to, to breathe into the side of his neck and just forget that they are in the middle of Europe and it’s miserable. 

“But I’m hungry too!” Jones protests, jerking Steve out of his thoughts and back into the conversation. 

Dugan notices, though. He squints and nods toward the fire. “Go sit over there, Rogers, you look half dead.” 

Steve wants to protest that he’s fine, really, that he’s not even that cold and he’s only a little bit damp, and he’s probably better off than most of them even after accidentally taking a swim fully clothed, but he’s weary and hasn’t slept in two days, and now they’re all looking at him, except Morita who is staring into the flames like he’s considering whether it’s reasonable to climb straight into the fire for its heat. 

So he just sighs, and without protest goes to the fire and sits down across from Morita. The others keep milling around, setting up camp, and Bucky wanders over to where the cat disappeared into a tight grouping of trees and underbrush to try to coax it out. He fails, but it’s not at all a surprise to Steve when it later nudges the back of Bucky’s elbow and wedges its way between the two of them to settle on Bucky’s lap closer to the warmth of the fire. 

“You think the cat’s all right?” Bucky says, and Steve knows he’s not talking about the gray one he’s absentmindedly scratching on the head. 

He can’t help but notice that Bucky hasn’t given the Brooklyn cat its own name this time, but he doesn’t point it out, just says, “Yeah, it’s got the whole apartment to itself.” 

“He, Steve,” Bucky responds, automatic, and, well, at least that’s the same. 

 

 

There’s an empty grave for Bucky that Steve can only bring himself to visit a few times. The first time is so short that it can barely even be called a visit, more of a viewing than anything, and the second is not much longer. 

The third time, though, he’s standing staring at the engraving blankly when a tabby cat suddenly appears out of seemingly nowhere and jumps atop the stone that bears said engraving. 

If Steve were a different type of person, he might think it’s a sign of some sort from Bucky. He knows it’s not, though, that it’s just a cat who saw a person who might pay attention to it and found the most convenient place to sit in his eyeline. But, well, he kind of wishes he were the type of person who could see it as a sign, could see it as a reminder that somewhere out there Bucky was watching over him even as everything else fell apart and nothing was the same and Steve was in a whole different world, a whole different time, where nothing made sense and his friends were all dead or so much older. 

He wishes it were a sign, but it’s not. It’s just a cat. It’s a cat who coincidentally sat at the grave of someone who bonded with a couple of other cats.

But, God, Steve wishes it could be a sign. He wishes it enough that instead of leaving, he sits down on the ground. He leans back against the stone, and the cat jumps down lightly beside him, purring and pushing against his arm. 

Steve slides down, eventually, so he’s on his side on the ground because his chest feels too heavy for sitting up properly. He’s reminded of when his mother died and he spent hours on the floor of their home, except this time there’s no Bucky to be stubborn outside the locked door until Steve forces himself up and lets him in, no Bucky to gather him in close and stroke his hair when Steve feels this numb. 

He wishes, too, almost more than that, that he could just talk to Bucky. The grave is just a plot of land with some beautifully carved stone on it, though, not anything Steve can make himself speak out loud to. 

The cat eventually squirms in the curve of Steve’s body. It kneads his stomach for a few minutes and he doesn’t bother to push it away, until eventually it settles in beside him until it starts to get dark. 

It’s quiet, just Steve and a cat and a decades gone best friend. Eventually, the cat gets bored and wanders off, and then it’s just Steve at an empty grave. 

 

 

Natasha, perhaps unsurprisingly, loves cats. Steve catches her, once, watching cat videos on YouTube with headphones on and her laptop propped on her lap, and he slips back out of the room before she notices him and feels the need to hide the amused smile flickering across her face. 

 

 

He sees cats all the time, of course, and mostly doesn’t pay much attention because he likes them all right but it’s not like he’s going to care for every single one he sees. There’s one in Vienna, though, a large grey and white one, that’s rolling on the pavement in front of them blissfully like it’s the best space of land it has ever set paw on, and Sam grins at it. He’s spent the day clearly trying to hide how worn down he is, but Steve had pushed on anyway because he thinks if he doesn’t try to follow this very thin lead they have about Bucky’s whereabouts, his head might split open out of frustration and lurking hopelessness. 

So Sam’s smile is a welcome relief, because Steve doesn’t quite know why Sam sticks around, why he’s become such a fast and loyal friend. And Steve thinks, then, that cats must be the most wonderful creatures to be able to bring even these brief moments of comfort to friends he doesn’t deserve by half.

 

 

They do eventually find Bucky, and then, later, Bucky comes to them. He stays one night at Steve’s new apartment back in Brooklyn again, and then, two weeks later, another night. Eventually he seems to stay there out of habit more than anything, until it actually, maybe, hopefully, turns into a bit of a home.

Months after that first time, Steve returns home to find Bucky curled up on the chair watching some movie, and on the floor by his toes is a cat. 

It’s both so unexpected and so reminiscent that it stops Steve in his tracks. The cat, feet curled under so it looks like a soft black rectangle with a head, turns to look at Steve. Bucky doesn’t acknowledge him at all, which is unfortunately normal. 

“Who’s this?” Steve asks, an echo of a lifetime ago. 

Like last time, Bucky seems to not find anything abnormal about the cat being there. He just shrugs and doesn’t look away from the argument the two characters on screen are having. 

Steve pushes down the hurt that always threatens to gather in his chest at moments like this, when Bucky is dismissive and uncommunicative to the extreme. He stands there a minute longer, watching one character on the screen storm off and slam her bedroom door, and resists the urge to shut himself in his own room. Instead, he goes to prepare dinner.

He decides to make soup, because soup is comfortable and doesn’t require thought to prepare. Ten minutes in, Bucky gently slides the cutting board and knife away from Steve and starts to methodically cut the vegetables into identically sized pieces. It’s an apology of sorts, maybe, or just Bucky wanting to make soup. Steve doesn’t say anything, just moves away to find dried pasta to throw in with the broth. 

“The Stephenson girl asked me to take the cat,” Bucky offers, quietly, after another few minutes. He dumps the vegetables into the pot, sets the cutting board and knife in the sink and then stands there, gaze on the floor. “Said she couldn’t keep her anymore.” 

Steve stops moving for a moment, looks at Bucky avoiding his gaze. He opens his mouth to respond and then can’t think of anything to say. It doesn’t explain why Bucky took the cat when asked. 

“Her name’s Rose,” Bucky continues with a nod toward the cat still in the other room when it’s clear Steve’s not going to respond. He looks wary, for no reason Steve can understand until he says all in quick, quiet succession, “I wanted her. I--it gets quiet, when you’re gone.” 

It hurts, a bit, to think that Bucky thinks Steve will tell him to get rid of the cat. He wouldn’t have before any explanation, and he definitely wouldn’t after. He knows that’s not what Bucky meant by his wariness, though, that it’s simply a byproduct of too many years of being told he can’t have anything. As much as Steve is selfishly hurt by Bucky’s distrust, Bucky only had a couple of decades with Steve compared to the many, many decades he had without him, and it hurts more that he might be feeling alone or bored or whatever else when Steve has to leave. So Steve will make sure they keep the cat, because it’s the first significant thing Bucky’s professed to wanting. Their building doesn’t allow pets, but Steve will throw all of his Captain America fame around if it means Bucky gets to keep this one. 

 

 

Natasha only raises her eyebrows at the cat and throws toys for it when no one’s paying attention. Sam smiles widely at it while the cat loudly purrs and rubs against his hands, and Bucky glares as if it’s a betrayal. No one else visits because Steve refuses to tell them where he lives even though they have probably figured it out anyway. It’s his space, though, his and Bucky’s, not someone else’s to bring chaos into.

It’s only a few days before Steve starts to warm up to the cat himself. This one seems younger than the cat they had before and never properly named. It’s more playful, more forceful with its affection. It attacks Steve’s feet from under the couch, surprises him by jumping out from behind furniture, crawls into his lap every morning while he eats breakfast. It likes sitting in the windowsill in the living room, staring avidly at their 4th floor view, and will meow inquiringly when Steve joins it.

It loves Bucky, though, unsurprisingly. It follows him from room to room and jumps onto his shoulders when it has the chance. Bucky doesn’t much acknowledge it when Steve’s around, only changing in the way he modulates his movements so the cat can balance better. Sometimes he will absentmindedly scratch the cat’s head when both of them are paying attention to something else, but he saves most of his attentions for the cat for somewhere out of sight. It sleeps in Bucky’s room every night, when it’s not trying to loudly play in the living room or run at top speed down the hallway at 2am, and occasionally Steve can hear Bucky say something, low, to the cat, and he has to stop himself from trying to listen in simply to hear more of Bucky’s voice. 

Bucky’s nightmares have already decreased but they do so even further with the cat’s presence. Steve’s not sure why that is, but he thinks the cat would be worth keeping around for that alone. Steve’s are rare, now, since most centred around Bucky falling and his subconscious seems to at least understand that he’s alive and relatively safe in the next room. Except occasionally, rarely, he dreams about falling himself, or crashes, or being attacked and unable to help his team. This time it’s a fall followed by cold, a worn dream that he thinks he should be over with by now but that comes back mostly when he’s exhausted and off his guard. 

He wakes up abruptly, breathing hard, and something is pushing rhythmically on his stomach and there’s someone standing in his doorway. He sits up, dislodging the cat kneading at his waist. Bucky’s unmoving in the doorway, leaning in a forced casualness against the jamb. 

“Sorry,” Steve says, automatic, his breath still unsteady and his heart beating fast as the cat returns to walk across his thighs and headbutt his shoulder. 

“Rose woke me up,” Bucky says, not acknowledging the apology in the slightest. “She wanted in your room.” 

Steve nods, unsure of how to reply to that. Bucky takes a step past the doorway, and then quickly snatches up the blanket on the end of the bed and shoves it at Steve. “Here. You’re shivering.” 

Steve only realizes it’s true when Bucky points it out, so he takes the blanket from him and wraps it around his shoulders and tries not to curl into himself. He can’t seem to get his breathing to even out, and he simultaneously wants Bucky to leave so he can get himself under control and for him to stay, even if it’s only to be a distant presence. 

He might not be the most emotionally stable person himself, but Bucky seems to sense that much at least. Thankfully, he opts to stay. He’s silent as he perches on the side of the bed near Steve’s hip, and he pulls the cat (Rose, Steve somewhat wildly thinks, he has to learn to call it (she) by name. It’s only politeness, after she tried to comfort him.) toward him and tucks it (her) into his side instead. Rose goes happily, because Bucky’s giving her attention and Steve is still mostly immobile, indeterminate terror apparently unwilling to leave.

He’s still trying, and largely failing, to get his breath back to normal. Bucky purses his lips and slides a bit closer, pushing the cat to the floor. She immediately jumps back up to the foot of the bed and perches there instead, looking at both of them like they are incredibly interesting, but slightly below her, mysteries. Bucky’s level with Steve, now, and he awkwardly and hesitantly reaches out to rub Steve’s back.

“I used to do this, sometimes?” he says, and because it’s a question that needs answering, Steve nods past all of the feelings that are trying to collapse his chest. His hand goes from uncertain to comforting soon enough, tracing in no particular pattern across Steve’s back. 

And because it’s dark and he’s trying not to go into a full-blown panic attack, and because Bucky’s right there and he never lets Steve comfort him but will apparently allow it the other way around, Steve lets his head drop to his best friend’s shoulder and he just breathes him in, his breath stuttering out closer to a sob than he really wants it to. Bucky’s hand only stills for a brief moment before he shifts in a bit closer and continues. He’s not as tense as Steve would have expected at any other time, and Steve’s stopped shivering and Bucky’s slightly fast heartbeat under his ear calms down his breathing and own heart enough for him to just feel hollow and off-kilter. 

“Sometimes I think about that orange cat,” Bucky says. “Do you remember him?” Steve nods against his shoulder, loathe to move even though he now has no real excuse to remain. Bucky’s hand stops moving, rests just below the back of Steve’s neck. The cat seems to take that as a sign she can move to them again, and settles on Bucky’s lap. His other (left) hand settles on her fur.

“I let him follow me home because I thought maybe he’d keep you company when I was working so much,” he continues. It’s the most information Bucky has offered in a long time, since when he got angry and tried to weaponize their past against Steve with furious words. He remembers most of it now, Steve thinks, or is very good at filling in the gaps and pretending. 

“I think he liked me more though.” Steve wants to look up to catch Bucky’s smirk that would accompany those words, except it’s probably not there anyway and that would mean moving. Instead, he doesn’t respond at all, just uses this opportunity to take in Bucky for all its worth before he closes himself off again. 

“Do you miss him?” Bucky asks, after a moment where the quiet is only broken by Rose’s sleepy purring. 

Steve’s voice doesn’t want to come out, and he’s forced to clear his throat before speaking. “When I came out of the ice, I wondered what happened to him.” It’s not really an answer, but it’s enough of one. There were too many things to miss when he woke up, so many far larger things, that a cat he had left behind even before that was not high on the list. 

Bucky shakes his head a bit, though. Steve can feel the movement against his forehead. “Not the cat. The old Bucky Barnes.”

Steve tenses and goes to sit up but Bucky holds him firmly in place with his hand on his back. He opens his mouth to reassure, to say of course not, he still has him, but then he shuts it again because a snap answer isn’t what is required here. It wouldn’t be the full truth, either, and he doesn’t think Bucky would appreciate that. So he forces himself to relax again, and after sorting through his thoughts he says into the darkness of Bucky’s shirt, “I miss what we had before the war. The quiet. The simplicity, even though at the time it seemed so hard. The neighbors. Just us and that cat in a horrible apartment in Brooklyn.” He hesitates, and then adds, because Bucky will know he’s hiding it, “I miss that closeness. You were always there, Buck.” He feels like he should say more, should mitigate it all somehow, but he’s not sure how so he lets himself fall silent. 

“Me too,” Bucky says, and then he tenses like he’s revealed too much, and it’s Steve’s turn to hold him in place. He loosely wraps an arm around Bucky’s waist, accidentally knocking his elbow against the cat’s nose. She lets out an annoyed, quiet mew before repositioning herself on Bucky’s lap. The combination of the cat and Steve’s arm keeps Bucky still, though, even though he could easily break Steve’s grip and standing up would dislodge the cat.

“Stay a bit longer?” Steve asks, quietly. He shouldn’t. He should let Bucky go because it’s Bucky’s choice to make if he wants to, except Steve really does not want him to leave yet. He still feels off-balance from the unexpected nightmare, from all the following events, and he wants to drag out Bucky’s closeness for as long as he can before it inevitably ends. 

There’s a pause, and then Steve feels Bucky consciously make an effort to relax enough to lean back against the headboard. He doesn’t say anything, but that’s answer enough for now. 

 

 

Bucky does leave eventually, pulling out from under Steve’s arm and very carefully placing the cat down beside Steve on the bed. He departs with a small, odd little pat to Steve’s hair and Steve lets him go. 

Two days later, he is reading in the chair by the window when Bucky walks in with Rose perched on his left shoulder. Her claws are digging into his clothing but he doesn’t seem to notice. He just pauses, seems to hesitate, and then calls, quietly, from across the room, “Steve?”

“Yeah?” He marks his page with the receipt serving as a bookmark, turns to Bucky. He doesn’t often start conversations unless it’s to ask about something practical, in which case he just straight-up asks. The hesitation deserves Steve’s full attention, even if it does make Bucky take a step toward the kitchen uncertainly, as if in retreat. 

“I know you--” And then he cuts himself off, looks annoyed, and says, carefully, “I like this version, too. I like us with this cat in this apartment in Brooklyn.” 

He looks simultaneously embarrassed that he just revealed that, worried about how Steve will respond, and a bit proud of himself for saying the words. It’s an odd, fast grouping of emotions that are carefully hidden under a blank mask a moment later. Bucky’s clearly off balance, has been trying to gear himself up to reassure Steve that this is good, too, and Steve wants to kick himself for not clarifying that earlier. Because it is good. It’s great, really, for all that it’s imperfect and they are still working on it. So Steve just smiles softly at him, and says, “Me too, Buck. I like it.”

Bucky nods firmly like that’s satisfactory, like he maybe does actually believe it, and then really does retreat to the kitchen, leaving Steve with his book and the sounds of Bucky beginning to make dinner and, when she trots back in to jump onto his lap, a cat.


End file.
